This simple pound cake recipe is moist, lightly sweet & nicely spiced. It's a divine afternoon treat, especially with dollops of yogurt & in-season fruit.
I hope you’re all having a great weekend! Ours has been pretty chill – we went to the farmers market, Jack played video games, and I did some baking. I’m excited to share this lovely little pound cake recipe with you because I think it’s the perfect Sunday afternoon treat. It’s lightly sweet and nicely spiced. Yogurt makes it tangy while giving it a nice puffed up look. It’s moist with that perfect cake-y crumb that you want in a quick bread.
My Pound Cake Recipe
To be fair, I’m stretching the term “pound cake” a little here. It’s traditionally made with a pound each of flour, sugar, eggs, and butter, and this one certainly isn’t. I swap olive oil for the butter, go easy on the sugar, and use a mix of almond flour and all-purpose flour to get that signature moist, dense pound cake texture. Nowadays, you’ll see a lot of recipes for sour cream or cream cheese pound cake, but I use yogurt here. It adds the same delicious tangy flavor that sour cream or cream cheese would, but it’s healthier, and it’s what I keep on hand.
I finish this easy pound cake recipe with a dash of warming spices – nutmeg, cardamom, and cinnamon – lemon zest, and vanilla extract to give it a bright, spiced flavor.
Easy Pound Cake Serving Suggestions
As I said above, I love to enjoy a slice of this pound cake as an afternoon treat with tea or coffee. It would also be a welcome addition to a brunch spread with a frittata, French toast, pancakes, breakfast casserole, or baked oatmeal. And of course, it’s a great choice for dessert.
No matter what, serve this easy pound cake with dollops of yogurt and seasonal fresh fruit. Or, for a more decadent treat, swap the yogurt for coconut whipped cream.
More Favorite Cakes and Quick Breads
If you love this pound cake recipe, try one of these cakes or quick breads next:
- Healthy Banana Bread
- Chocolate Zucchini Bread
- Pumpkin Bread
- Vegan Chocolate Cake
- Best Carrot Cake
- Apple Cake
Yogurt Pound Cake
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- ½ cup almond flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon cardamom
- ½ teaspoon nutmeg
- ¾ teaspoon sea salt
- ½ cup cane sugar
- 1 tablespoon lemon zest
- ¾ cup Stonyfield Organic Plain Whole Milk Yogurt, more for serving
- ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- fresh fruit, for serving
- Preheat the oven to 350°F and spray an 8x4-inch loaf pan with cooking spray.
- In a large bowl, combine the flour, almond flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg and salt.
- In another large bowl, whisk together the cane sugar and lemon zest. Then add the yogurt, olive oil, eggs, and vanilla and whisk to combine.
- Pour the dry ingredients into the bowl with the wet ingredients and stir until just combined. Don’t overmix.
- Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake 40 to 50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Serve with dollops of yogurt and fresh fruit.
This post is in partnership with Stonyfield Organic and Blue Apron. All thoughts, photos, and experiences are my own!
Mine is in the oven! I’m a ditz and forgot to add baking powder so I had to mix it in 10 minutes after it started baking, oops lol. I also only did 1/4 cp sugar and added chia seeds as well as measured the vanilla with my heart! It is already smelling delicious. I will update after we eat it!
This recipe is fantastic! It is indeed a wonderful breakfast or afternoon pick-me-up. It came out delicious despite my several edits: I used Greek yogurt instead of regular, lemon juice instead of zest, and AP flour instead of almond because those are the things I had in my pantry! I also added a glaze made of lemon juice and powdered sugar, which added a nice fresh contrast to the very subtle sweetness of the loaf. So rest assured that even if you have to make lots of edits, this will still be a lovely, light, nicely spiced and satisfying cake 🙂
I’m so glad you loved it!
I just made this bread today and it was very good! I enjoy that it is less sweet than I what I normally bake (and eat!). I actually used 1/4 cup of monk fruit sugar and 1/4 cup of granulated because I didn’t have cane sugar on hand. I also used chobani complete vanilla Greek yogurt with no added sugar. It still came out with a light texture and good crumb! Just like the photos. Yum! Thank you for the recipe.
Made this today as a light dessert after the rich holiday food, I used orange in place of the lemons, very good!
I made this and made some edits, came out delicious!
1) soy based yogurt, it’s what I had
2) no lemons so no lemon zest, a missed opportunity here
3) no almond flour, all purpose all the way
4) grape nuts on top! Adds mega crunch highly recommend it. (Next time I’ll do brown sugar and grape nuts)
This is a great recipe – made with a few edits. Use orange zest instead of lemon zest and thinned out some greek yogurt with some fresh squeezed orange juice to use in place of the Stonyfield yogurt. Also added a nice orange glaze. Super delicious.
i took a risk and made this recipe gluten free just by subbing the all-purpose flour for 1/2 cup fine grain brown rice flour and 1/2 cup sweet sorghum flour, and it worked beautifully! everyone at the barbecue loved it.
thank you for another great recipe. <3
I have a family member with an egg allergy. I know you can sometimes substitute eggs, bananas or vinegar. Do you have any thoughts on modifying this recipe to accommodate his allergy?
Hi Hailey, I haven’t gotten this recipe to work without eggs, but perhaps you might like this banana muffin recipe: https://www.loveandlemons.com/vegan-chocolate-chip-banana-muffins/
You could skip the chocolate chips and add cardamom instead. I’m pretty sure the muffins could be baked in a loaf pan, I would just bake them longer (start at 40 minutes).
Here are 2 other (no-egg) vegan bread recipes that I enjoy:
https://www.loveandlemons.com/almond-chocolate-chip-zucchini-bread/
https://www.loveandlemons.com/vegan-pumpkin-bread/
Hope that helps!
This recipe sounds delicious! I normally only have greek-style yogurt on hand – if I used that, should I thin it out slightly with milk? Thank you!
Hi Jen, yes, the plain Stonyfield yogurt is a lot thinner than greek yogurt. Thinning it out a bit should work, I can’t see why not(?), but I also haven’t tried it to know a specific ratio. Hope that helps, let me know how it goes?
I thank you for very great recipes you share. I tried this cake and everything went well. However I replaced the sugar with this sweetner: https://www.hollandandbarrett.com/shop/product/sukrin-gold-sugar-alternative-60019920?skuid=019920
It turned out a bit salty for my taste. Can I reduce the salt in my next try? Do you have any suggestion.
Thank you ?
Hi Soma, I’m glad you liked the cake! You can reduce the salt to 1/4 teaspoon if you like.
Thank you for your reply, I will try that.
Hi, I really want to make this, I like how simple it is. But my husband has a nut allergy. Is there anything I could use in place of almond flour?
Hi Stephanie, oh no, the almond flour is so delicious 🙂 I haven’t tried with another type of flour so I can’t really say for sure but I think just more AP or whole wheat pastry flour might work.
Making this today! Is it necessary to add the almond flour?
it is! The cake would be more dry if you used another type of flour in it’s place. It’s delicious!
Thank you! Will go buy some Bob’s red mill 🙂 Love all your recipes!
thank you! I love almond flour, I think you’ll get good use of it :). Hope you like the cake!
Nothing better than a cherry dessert in the summer!
I just love your photographs! So beautiful. Looks absolutely delicious and I love the combination of cardamom and yogurt. YUM!
thank you! The spices are so yummy together 🙂
Do you think this recipe would work using coconut milk yogurt?
I haven’t tried it so I’m not sure! I think it might just not rise quite as much.
I am inclined to call his breakfast! : )
this, not his (sorry)
Ha, I ate a slice for breakfast every day last week 🙂
This tea cake is so lovely and I really appreciate hearing more about it’s inspiration. 😉